The Monday Catch-Up - 28/11/2016

Naomi is the Miss Vogue editor and social media manager of British Vogue

Monday 28 November 2016

With Black Friday behind us and the discounts of Cyber Monday enticing the bargain hunters amongst us, here are the talking points of the weekend that you might have missed:

Getty

Fidel Castro - the Cuban revolutionary leader - died age 90. His passing instigated tributes from world leaders, most notably Barack Obama. Two years after the president neutralised the relationship between Havana and Washington, he paid tribute to Castro saying: "We know that this moment fills Cubans – in Cuba and in the United States – with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."

BBC

The weekend also saw Ed Balls (finally) hang up his dancing shoes. After three months salsa-ing and jiving across our TV screens, the former shadow chancellor confessed that leaving Strictly Come Dancing felt "like a victory, not a defeat". Although he might have been voted off the show, Balls confessed that his wife, Labour MP Yvette Cooper, "is absolutely clear that she wants to learn the Charleston, foxtrot and jive so we are definitely going to keep dancing."

With Instagram creating their own real-time image sharing platform, the question of what comes next for Snapchat is becoming a regular topic. This weekend, WWD reported that Snapchat will be selling stocks for the first time which could attract a sum of $25 billion for the American company - twice as much as Twitter, but still providing little competition for Facebook's $357.2 billion. Realistically, what Evan Speigel's company needs to do next is develop as a platform, along with obtaining a savvy corporate strategy.